From April 2 to 6, Nadia Morgenthaler will be presenting her jewelry at PAD Paris. This independent Swiss designer has a powerful and highly personal style.

 

 

In high jewelry, there are generally two camps: those who excel in design and those who have mastered production. Nadia Morgenthaler, based in Geneva, is one of the few who stands out in both. “The School of Decorative Arts in Geneva trained me in both. Since then, I have always been torn,” admits Nadia Morgenthaler. Today, she has achieved a balance: developing her own brand of fine jewelry, launched in 2013, while also running a renowned workshop of seven artisans.

 

The foundation of the brand: technical virtuosity

“My workshop is the Geneva workshop where I started under the direction of Mr. Bonet and which I bought from him when he retired in 2009. From the beginning, I worked on pieces for the biggest names in the business,” she explains. This means a very high level of sophistication, the ability to materialize designs in jewelry, to model them, to develop highly flexible interlocking pieces, to achieve invisible or almost invisible settings, etc. She remains silent on the identity of her prestigious clients, but we now know that Joel Arthur Rosenthal (JAR), known for his extreme demands, was one of them for a long time.

 

Technique at the service of aesthetics

We too often forget that technique plays a considerable role in style: design is not everything. Nadia Morgenthaler knows metal and precious stones so well, the way they will react and their impossibilities, that her field of possibilities is almost infinite. She can anticipate, invent and reconnect with “forgotten” techniques because she has the artisans to do so. From whatever angle you look at them, her unique pieces show that nothing is left to chance. Seen from the side, the edge of an earring is made up of a layer of silver (which will turn black over time) and a layer of red gold framing a row of yellow gold beads. “Because the melting points of these metals are different, making them by hand is a delicate process that requires a lot of patience,” she explains. Let’s look at another one from behind… The settings of the stones and the prongs that hold them form a remarkable graphic composition.

 

The structure in light

If we break down her jewelry, we realize how important the structure is. A great admirer of 19th-century iron architecture and ironwork, Nadia Morgenthaler makes this structure a central element, very often emphasizing it with blackened gold. To support a column of opals with kaleidoscopic reflections, they trace three vertical lines. To keep a rock crystal pendant suspended in the air, she surrounds it with two rings fitted with fixing rods, each connected to a thin chain. The systems may appear mechanical and complex, but visually it is incredibly delicate. Everything moves. The diamonds and fine pearls in powdery shades, her favorite material, soften the whole.

 

Multiple influences

It is always tempting to link a work to specific influences. In Nadia Morgenthaler’s work, they are subliminal and never literal. They intersect, overlap and merge. Her pendant is reminiscent of a pompom, the A-frame of the Eiffel Tower or the (inverted) hot-air balloon chandelier created by the craftsmen of the time to celebrate this invention. We can also see her taste for antique jewelry in oxidized silver and fine pearls from the 19th century. Her favorite piece, the earrings, is a testament to her quest for mobility and flexibility. They evoke pompons or church chandeliers made up of crowns. Moreover, unlike a sculpture, they only exist in a vacuum, when they are worn. Leave them on a shelf and they literally collapse! The beauty of the immaterial…

 

“It took me time and maturity to develop this stylistic language,” says Nadia Morgenthaler. Now on a solid footing, she is launching her first collection consisting of reproducible and therefore more affordable pieces. And not the other way around. A logical trajectory, with perfect coherence.

 

PAD Paris – Second Petale booth n°25

02.04.2025 to 06.04.2015

Jardin des Tuileries

75001 Paris